This morning I created a new blog using Blogger. I feel like I will be able to personalize my blog more than I can using WordPress. Sometimes I just don’t understand WordPress….like when people link to one of my posts, but they don’t have my correct name. It is very strange. Anyway, the new site is www.jenniferjanesstylejournal.blogspot.com. Hopefully I this new project will inspire me to post more often about the things that I enjoy and love!

A few months back, I ordered an Erte print. I was sooo excited when it arrived, but the frame was wrong, so it had to be sent back and reframed. Now our living room is pretty much complete with my Erte girl. I just finished reading Barbara Walter’s memoir, and she told how Erte designed show costumes for her father’s nightclub. She now collects his sketches and has a whole wall of them. I would love to see a picture of that.

For some weird reason, I have not received the past two issues of Domino in my mailbox…So, I was browsing their site and saw a mention of Horst photography, which sent me off on a search for more information on this iconic photographer.

Horst, born in Germany, began his career in 1931 in Paris and first became known for his fashion photographs in Vogue, which featured unique lighting and sculptural influences. In the 1960s, Horst began to create lifestyle portraits and interior photos in the United States for Vogue and House and Garden, many of which can be seen in the book Horst: Interiors by Barbara Plumb (currently available on amazon.com for $82.57). Also, the Staley Wise Gallery has a collection of Horst’s work for sale (price available upon request). These images below are just a few of my favorites from the site www.horstphorst.com. Enjoy!

We couldn’t resist visiting the CineVegas Film Festival again yesterday and watching the film Where I Stand. The movie told the story of Hank Greenspun and was so much more than what I was expecting. I knew the Greenspun name as a publisher here in Las Vegas, but Hank’s influence was felt in so much more.

From Brooklyn, NY, Hank moved to Las Vegas after serving in WWII and became a publicist, working with Bugsey Siegel. Over the next couple of decades, Hank was involved in so much, including smuggling weapons to Palestine as part of the Haganah (the details of that are just amazing), starting his own newspaper with his famous “Where I Stand” column (one upping his competitor whose was titled “Where I Sit”), publicly opposing Senator Joe McCarthy, being the founder of Nevada’s first television station, offering free services to subscribers who were audited by the IRS, and negotiating the buying of several casinos for Howard Hughes, which helped clean up Las Vegas from the mob.

There’s more, but since I’m not an expert, read this excerpt of the New York Time’s 1989 obituary:

“Mr. Greenspun’s dealings with Mr. Hughes gave him a small place in the history of the Watergate affair. J. Anthony Lukas, author of ”Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years,” wrote that President Richard M. Nixon’s operatives planned a second burglary in addition to the famous one at the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel. The target was Mr. Greenspun’s safe at The Las Vegas Sun, which was believed to contain memos about dealings between Mr. Hughes and Bebe Rebozo, the former President’s close friend.” An audio tape is played in the movie of Nixon speaking of Greenspun and saying something like “Cris, everyone knows who Hank Greenspun is”.

Greenspun helped end the racial discrimination in Las Vegas (which I didn’t even know had existed). He was also very involved in trying to establish Middle East peace, but that was all a little bit above my head…You could tell he had friends in high places. Hank was very vocal on protecting citizens during the nuclear testing and the Yucca Mountain situation (again, another situation that I know little about). All while raising a family!

The director, Scott Goldstein, hopes to have national big screen distribution. This review of the movie doesn’t do it justice, but I think Hank is such an inspiration to us all (especially young people) that his story deserves to be shared.

I just lovetrendcentral.com. This morning, their newsletter featured cool websites and included was Lipstick Tracez. The founder, Reggie Casagrande, wants to “provide a culture-rich, lifestyle-driven destination for women”. That already sounds refreshing and fabulous! A little bit more from the Trendcentral newsletter: “…she’s handpicked an arsenal of dynamic women, including entrepreneurs, artists, designers, journalists, educators, and other creative types, to continually contribute their thoughts, ideas, and dreams about art, street trends and pop culture as they see fit. In addition to the 18 individual “lipstick” blogs, the site also features interviews with and original content from emerging and established names in the art and design worlds.”

I checked out a few of the blogs already and was pleased. The women all seem great-edgy with their own minds. In fact, on Cindy’s blog, I thought I recognized her bedroom, and as it turns out, she is one of the designers of the fashion line Libertine. (Her apartment was featured in Domino last year-I swear I am not a stalker). Anyway, I can’t wait to check out all of the ladies’ blogs and hope you do to!